Technology & Ideas

U.S. Schools Trying to Teach Online Highlight a Digital Divide

The children who lack internet and computers now also lack access to education.

People wait in line to receive food distributed by Montgomery County Public Schools as part of a program to feed children while schools are closed in Silver Spring, Maryland, on March 20. 

Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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As Ohio began closing school buildings in mid-March and shifting to online education to limit the novel coronavirus, 30-year-old Alexandria Stottlemire worried about how she, her four children, her two school-age siblings and her mother would be able to get by with one computer. Stottlemire’s mother, who works from home, needed it during the day, and Stottlemire needed the computer at night for an online distance learning program.